In the early hours of the morning of 9 April 1940 Nazi
Germany invaded Norway and Denmark. Those invasions
constituted wars of aggression, and also wars in violation
of international treaties, agreements, and assurances.

A. Treaties and Assurances Violated.

The invasions constituted violations of the Hague Convention
and of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. In addition there were
specific agreements between Germany and Norway and Denmark.
There was the Treaty of Arbitration and Conciliation between
Germany and Denmark, which was signed at Berlin on 2 June
1926 (TC-17). The first Article of that Treaty is in these
terms:

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"The Contracting Parties undertake to submit to the
procedure of arbitration or conciliation, in conformity
with the present Treaty, all disputes of any nature
whatsoever which may arise between Germany and Denmark
and which it has not been possible to settle within a
reasonable period by diplomacy or to bring with the
consent of both Parties before the Permanent Court of
International Justice.

"Disputes for the solution of which a special procedure
has been laid down in other Conventions in force
between the Contracting Parties shall be settled in
accordance with the provisions of such Conventions."
(TC-17)

The remaining Articles deal with the machinery for
arbitration. There was also the treaty of nonaggression
between Germany and Denmark which was signed by Ribbentrop
on 31 May 1939, ten weeks after the Nazi seizure of
Czechoslovakia (TC-24). The preamble and Articles 1 and 2
read as follows:

"His Majesty the King of Denmark and Iceland and the
Chancellor of the German Reich,

"Being firmly resolved to maintain peace between
Denmark and Germany in all circumstances, have agreed
to confirm this resolve by means of a treaty and have
appointed as their Plenipotentiaries: His Majesty the
King of Denmark and Iceland and the Chancellor of the
German Reich.

"Article I: The Kingdom of Denmark and the German Reich
shall in no case resort to war or to any other use of
force one against the other.

"Should action of the kind referred to in Paragraph 1
be taken by a third Power against- one of the
Contracting Parties, the other Contracting Party shall
not support such action in any way.

"Article II: The Treaty shall come into force on the
exchange of the instruments of ratification and shall
remain in force for a period of ten years from that
date." (TC-24) The Treaty is dated 31 May 1939. At the
bottom of the page there appears the signature of
Ribbentrop. The invasion of Denmark by the Nazi forces
less than a year after the signature of this treaty
showed the utter worthlessness of treaties to which
Ribbentrop put his signature.

With regard to Norway, Ribbentrop and the Nazi conspirators
were party to a similar perfidy. Hitler gave an assurance to
Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands on 28 April 1939 (TC-
30. That, of course, was after the annexation of
Czechoslovakia had

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shaken the confidence of the world, and was presumably an
attempt to try to reassure the Scandinavian States. Hitler
said:

"I have given binding declarations to a large number of
States. None of these States can complain that even a
trace of a demand contrary thereto has ever been made
to them by Germany. None of the Scandinavian statesmen,
for example, can contend that a request has ever been
put to them by the German Government or by the German
public opinion which was incompatible with the
sovereignty and integrity of their State.

"I was pleased that a number of European States availed
-themselves of these declarations by the German
Government to express and emphasize their desire too
for absolute neutrality. This applies to Holland,
Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, etc." (TC-30)

A further assurance was given by the Nazi Government on 2
September 1939, the day after the Nazi invasion of Poland.
On that day an aide memoire was handed to the Norwegian
Foreign Minister by the German Minister in Oslo. It reads:

"The German Reich Government is determined, in view of
the friendly relations which exist between Norway and
Germany, under no circumstances to prejudice the
inviolability and integrity of Norway and to respect
the territory of the Norwegian State. In making this
declaration the Reich Government naturally expects, on
its side, that Norway will observe an unimpeachable
neutrality towards the Reich and will not tolerate any
breaches of Norwegian neutrality by any third party
which might occur. Should the attitude of the Royal
Norwegian Government differ from this so that any such
breach of neutrality by a third party recurs, the Reich
Government would then obviously be compelled to
safeguard the interests of the Reich in such a way as
the resulting situation might dictate." (TC-31)

There followed a further German assurance to Norway in a
speech by Hitler on 6 October 1939 in which he said:

"Germany has never had any conflicts of interest or
even points of controversy with the Northern States;
neither has she any today. Sweden and Norway have both
been offered nonaggression pacts by Germany and have
both refused them solely because they do not feel
themselves threatened in any way." (TC-32)

These treaties and assurances were the diplomatic background
-to the Nazi aggression on Norway and Denmark. These assur-

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ances were simply given to lull suspicion and cause the
intended victims of Nazi aggression to be unprepared to meet
the Nazi attack. For it is now known that as early as
October 1939 the conspirators were plotting the invasion of
Norway, and that the most active conspirators in that plot
were Raeder and Rosenberg.

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